Hi everyone. I am very excited to have this opportunity to be here and nursing papers talk to you all. Many of you may have seen me hanging out in the forums for a while but I figured it was about time I stepped out in a more public way and see what I can give back to this amazing community. I think that to be able to fully explain why I am here I should tell you the story of how I got into raiding.

I first started playing in mid 2008 right in the middle of the Burning Crusade. I chose to roll druid because I would be able to play a cow (huge fan of Cairne from WC3) and a friend told me druids could do just about any type of role in the game. I leveled up to 70 with some local friends and thought I would try my hand at tanking for their raiding group.

I believe my first raiding experience can be summed up in two words, “You Suck!”. Or at least those were the two words a good friend of mine had used to describe the night I had just had tanking Karazhan for the first time. I was a little stunned as this was coming from the friend who had been encouraging me to play a bear the whole time I was leveling.

“You would make a great tank” had been thrown around a few times. As I recovered from my shock she went on, “The other officers asked me to talk to you about what is going on. Your TPS is really low for a bear.” “TPS?” “Yeah, Threat Per Second. As a bear you should be going crazy, but you don’t seem to be able to hold anything. What addon are you using to track your threat?” “Addon?” I am sure you can see were this was going. I was a full on inexperienced, keyboard turning, click every ability, Nub. Now because this was a very close friend who I know wasn’t just being a jerk it made me realize I was missing something. The two things which define me as a gamer are, 1. I hate losing, and 2. I can’t stand not knowing something. Because no one else in the guild had any experience with playing a druid I was on my own.

The next day I started a seach for how to “Do feral right”. I came upon the blog that would totally change my Warcraft exerience forever. The blog was “Of Teeth and Claws” written by Karthis. The amount of information he had on his site was amazing. There were awesome articles about gearing, the threat rotation (single target and multi target), and UI modification. Karthis was my first intro to a very large Druid community that I had no idea even existed. While being much farther advanced in content then most of his readers he always took time to answer even the smallest questions. I devoured all of the content I could from the site, and made a lot of changes to how I played. The next week in Kara was a totally different experience. I ended up pulling Moroes off our Warrior tank (something I am super proud of to this day). In the weeks that followed that I was further exposed to other awesome feral bloggers, Flyv of Flyv’s Warcraft blog and Kalon of Think Tank (we know him here as Felhoof). Using the information I gained from these blogs I continued to push myself to be better. By the time Wrath had come out I had completed all of Tier 4, 5/6 SSC, 3/4 TK in Tier 5, and 6/9 in BT. Not the most amazing progress but I was very happy with it. I continued to progress through Wraith, trying my hand at both Boomkin and Kitty and having success at both. By this time Karthis and Flyv had retired from wow, and Kalon was stepping back to be with his family. That was when I discovered Alaron and The Fluid Druid. I have pretty much been lurking around the site and the forums ever since.

This game has given me years of joy and I have met many friends here. Without all of the patient, helpful and just all around amazing folks in the Druid community I would not be in the spot I am now (which I think is a pretty darn good one). I feel compelled to give back to the community that has given me so much. So please feel free to ask questions, it doesn’t matter how small. Even if I don’t know the answer I am pretty sure I could find someone who will know. Thanks a lot everyone!